


A Quiet Evening In

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: My Family (And Other Dinosaurs) [32]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3269639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, quiet family evenings go almost perfectly to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Quiet Evening In

            The doorbell rang, and Liz grinned and went to open it. “Hi, Jules. How was ballet?”

 

            “Soul-destroying,” Juliet said brightly, bouncing through the front door and kicking off her shoes with extreme relief. “I never want to do another jeté as long as I live, I need a new pair of pointe shoes, and I stink.”

 

            Liz kissed her anyway. “My hands are sticky, sorry. Shower?”

 

            “Oh God, yes. What are you cooking?”

 

            “Sticky pork, rice, and... probably just plain broccoli, I can’t be arsed to stir-fry stuff, and there’s fridge cake for pudding, presuming Jon hasn’t eaten it, the greedy bastard. Although the chances of Jon and Dad joining us are looking a bit slim.” Liz went back to putting bits of pork in a casserole.

 

            “Any reason why?” Juliet leaned against the breakfast bar, and watched Liz rinse her hands and pour onion, garlic, chilli and equal portions of dry sherry and soy sauce into a bowl, before attacking the unappetising mixture with a whisk.

 

            Liz tried to think of a way of saying ‘there’s a triceratops at Twickenham rugby ground messing up the pitch’ that wouldn’t be in breach of national security. “Dunno. Work complications.” She shrugged, and dropped the empty soy sauce bottle into the bin. “How’s your mum liking Toronto? She’s landed by now, right?”

 

            Juliet grinned. “She says it’s too cold, but the people are very polite. Also, something about cheese, chips and screw the diet. When are we eating?”

 

            “In about an hour and a half.” Liz poured the mixture over the pork in the casserole, added copious amounts of cinnamon and star anise, and put the lid on before bending to fiddle with the hob. “You have plenty of time for a ridiculously long shower.” She threw a sideways grin over her shoulder. “But Strictly starts in half an hour and I know how you bitch if you miss it, so...”

 

            Juliet yelped and glanced at her watch. “Oh, Christ, it is!”

 

            “Shower?” Liz suggested.

 

            “Definitely shower,” Juliet said, and dashed into the bathroom.

 

            Liz smiled, rolled her eyes, shouted after Juliet that there were spare towels in the cupboard, and went to chuck Juliet’s ballet stuff in the washing machine with the latest load of washing. She was examining this critically, wondering what kind of dinosaur bodily fluid produced the weird crumbly puce stains on one of Lyle’s grey t-shirts and whether it shouldn’t be either washed separately or nuked, when her phone went off. She dived across the corridor into her bedroom and grabbed it off her desk.

 

            Juliet shrieked and threw a sock at her.

 

            “Fuck!” Liz yelped, and clapped her hand over her eyes, automatically pressing the call button on her ringing phone to shut it up. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, didn’t actually see anything... I’m going, I’m going.”

 

             “Is there something I should know?” Lyle said on the other end of the phone, sounding entirely too amused.

 

            “Do you _want_ your supper?” Liz demanded, walking into a wall, swearing some more and taking her hand away from her eyes.

 

            “Yeah, but that’s not going to stop me teasing you. Has Juliet just flashed you?”

 

            “Piss off, Jon,” Liz sighed, going to the linen cupboard and opening it, inspecting the supply of clean sheets. After some thought, she chose a set of sheets for the spare room and dodged inside to drop them on the bed before going back to check on the food. “Dad had better not be listening. Are you coming home tonight or not?”

 

            “Give us an hour or so,” Lyle said, suddenly serious. “The Minister’s being difficult about the rugby pitch. Your dad’s been in a meeting with him for the past two hours and the bastard’s showing no signs of shutting up.”

 

            “Okay,” Liz said. She wandered up to the living-room window and stared out of it, nose almost pressed up against the glass. “That’s fine. Are you okay?”

 

            “Thriving. Why?”

 

            “You sound tired.” She pushed her palm against the glass, and craned her neck to stare down the river Thames at the bridges, fragile tendrils over the river.

 

            “We had a shitty anomaly. Fiver caught it.”

 

             Liz flinched and hissed. “Caught it...?”

 

            “In hospital, but stable. Ditzy thought he was a goner, but it looks like he’s pulling through.”

 

            Liz whistled through her teeth. “Bit close.”

 

            “You could say that. Got to go, Liz. See you later.”

 

            “See you later. Kick the Minister’s arse for me.”

 

            Lyle chuckled. “I bloody wish.” He ended the call, and Liz tucked her phone back into her pocket and leaned back against the window for a moment.

 

              “You know I hate it when you do that,” Juliet said abruptly, and Liz stood up straight and moved away from the window.

 

            “It’s pretty solid, Ju,” she pointed out. “I can’t fall.”

 

            “It doesn’t look very solid to me,” Juliet muttered, and went to perch on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar with a comb. She began to attack her wet hair ruthlessly.

 

            “Still,” Liz said.

 

Juliet shrugged, ripping the comb through a major tangle.

 

Liz half-smiled, shrugged in reply and trailed a hand across Juliet’s shoulders as she passed her on the way to the hob. Cautiously she moved the lid on the casserole and checked on the sticky pork. It hadn’t turned green and wasn’t giving off noxious fumes, so she presumed all was well and put the lid back on again. “Are you annoyed with me about... me walking in?”

 

            “I was just surprised.”

 

            “Because... I can put the sheets on the spare bed if you want.” She hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter, watching Juliet tear the snarls out of her hair, leaving it smooth and dull gold and dripping wet.

 

            Juliet paused in her combing, and caught Liz’s eye. “I’m not _that_ annoyed. I mean. It is your room.”

 

            Liz tried not to squirm. “I should have realised you’d be changing in there. I thought you’d gone into the bathroom, but...”

 

            “I needed the loo,” Juliet said bluntly, as the comb snagged in her hair. “You couldn’t have known I’d... _ow_... moved.” She tugged at the latest tangle.

 

            Liz eyed her for a moment. “You look like a mermaid,” she said at last.

 

            Juliet dropped her comb and slipped off the stool to grab it. “What?”

 

            Liz turned brick red. “You know. Sitting on a rock. Combing your hair-“

 

            “Luring innocent schoolgirls to death and debauchery?” Juliet completed, straightening up with a grin.

 

            Liz smirked, losing the blush slowly, and turned to deal with the currently raw broccoli and rice. “If you like.”

 

            “I do like. _Ouch_!”

 

            Liz heard the distinctive sound of several teeth parting company with the comb and pinging onto the floor. “Did the comb break?”

 

            “It’s just lost four teeth,” Juliet grumbled. It sounded like she was picking them up off the ground. “Which makes nine teeth lost, which makes it practically _useless_. Damn it.”

 

            “There’s a brush in my room,” Liz said, chucking rice into a saucepan and setting it aside, then rinsing the broccoli. She checked her watch. “If you go and find it now, I can fix your hair while Strictly’s on.”

 

            “You are sometimes an awesome girlfriend,” Juliet grinned, heading for Liz’s room. “It’s just that you have no sense of timing.”

 

            “Whatever,” Liz said gruffly, and shared her pleased smile with the broccoli she was dismembering.

 

***

 

            The door of the ARC’s conference room opened, and men and women filed out: the response team that had handled the Twickenham anomaly, some alarming civil servant called Christine Johnson working as an aide to the Minister, Miss Wickes carrying four months’ worth of files and pretending she didn’t want to strangle Miss Johnson, and finally Lester and the Minister. Lyle straightened from where he had been leaning against the wall a little way down the corridor, and followed behind the group as Lester waved off Miss Johnson and the Minister and the ARC employees hurried to get their things and get off duty. He trailed Lester up to his office and stood in the doorway, hand resting on the doorjamb, as Lester collapsed in his chair and rubbed his hands over his eyes.

 

            “All right?” Lyle said, quietly for him.

 

            Lester looked up sharply. “What? Oh, it’s you.” He sighed heavily, tapped at the keyboard of his computer until it came to life and shut it down. “Well, it could have been worse. I can’t say I especially _enjoyed_ the minute discussion of almost every anomaly for the past four months, but I think we got our message across. Regardless of Christine Johnson and her appalling behaviour.”

 

            Lyle sat down in the black leather chair in a corner of the office and settled cautiously into it. Theoretically, it was ergonomic. In actual fact, it had broken when Connor Temple tried it out, possibly because he insisted on bouncing on it, and Lyle wasn’t convinced that it was fixed yet. “What happened?”

 

            “She decided that only two people at the table were worth being remotely polite to and was excruciatingly imperious to the rest.” Lester pinched the bridge of his nose. “She kept cutting Temple off in the middle of a sentence, so Miss Maitland became obstreperous - keeping that pair under control will turn me _grey_ – and Cutter went on the offensive. More offensive than usual, that is to say.”

 

            Lyle raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Those tactics don’t sound _at all_ familiar.”

 

            Lester glared, but said nothing.

 

            Miss Wickes stuck her head around the door. “I’m just going, sir.”

 

            Lester nodded in acknowledgement. “I hope the rest of your evening is an improvement on the past...” He checked his watch. “...three hours.”

 

            Miss Wickes retained her professionalism, and smiled blandly. “I hope so too.” She moved away, and they listened to the sharp clicking of her heels as she walked down the ramp.

 

            After a moment, Lyle stirred. “Come on, let’s go home. Liz is cooking.”

 

            “Liz always cooks,” Lester reminded him dryly, but he got up and started pulling his things together anyway.  

 

            “Oi! I do too. Sometimes.”  


            “Once in a cerulean moon, my little fruitbat. And you generally burn it when you do.” Lester tucked his Blackberry into his pocket. “ _I_ cook more than you do, and at least Liz never feels the need to check that I haven’t cooked with food that’s past its sell-by date.”

 

            “I did that once!”

 

            “Liz never forgets,” Lester said darkly, and led the charge back to the Mercedes.

 

            Lyle slid into the front passenger seat of the Mercedes, cranked the seat back so that he could stretch his legs out and turned to Lester with a grin. “Home, James.”

 

            Lester rolled his eyes expressively. “Just for that, I should make you walk.”

 

***

 

            The key scraped in the lock, and Liz moved out of the kitchen area and Juliet halted her commentary on the dancers’ dresses and their practicality or otherwise long enough to see who was coming in.

 

            “I’m sorry we’re late,” Lester apologised, and went over to give his daughter a hug, which she returned.

 

            “’S fine,” Liz said, extricating herself from the embrace and stirring the boiling rice. “Great timing, anyway, this is...” She tipped aside the lid and peered at the contents of the casserole. “... Just about done. Give me a minute.”

 

            “It smells really good,” Juliet observed, kneeling up on the sofa and totally ignoring the rather ham-fisted tango going on on the TV screen.

 

            “Mm,” Liz said absently, stirring it. “It’s supposed to be a nice recipe. But you’re all going to have to watch out for the cinnamon, no way am I taking it out now. Dad, can you lay the table and stuff, I’m a bit-”

 

            “On it,” Juliet said, climbing over the back of the sofa and going for the cutlery.

 

            “Thanks.” Liz strained the rice and the broccoli, and took down four plates. “Has anyone seen the other bottle of soy sauce? I finished one cooking this, but there were two. Nicky opened another one last time he visited, the idiot.”

 

            “We finished it,” Lester answered, passing over this commentary on his youngest son and selecting a bottle of red wine and two glasses. “I meant to get some more on the way home from work this evening, but we were... rather later than we should have been.”

 

            “Doesn’t matter,” Liz shrugged. “There’s plenty of sauce with it anyway.”

 

            “Oh come on, that did _not_ deserve a three!” Juliet cried.

 

            “What?” Lester said, baffled. Liz cast her eyes ceiling-wards, and jerked her head at the TV, on which the excitable Italian judge was being uncharitable about the motion in someone’s hips.

 

            “I mean,” Juliet said, waving the salt for emphasis, “it was a lousy tango in terms of technique, but if this was a competition about technique she’d have been off weeks ago. So she ought to get the points for emotional resonance she’s been getting all this time!”

 

            “Personally,” Liz said, ladling the pork onto plates and adding generous helpings of the sauce, “I don’t see how anyone wearing that many sequins could resonate with anything without having a fatal accident.”

 

            “Problem is,” Lyle said thoughtfully, examining the woman in question, “the sequins are _all_ she’s wearing. Resonate wearing that little lot and pretty soon you won’t be wearing it any longer.”

 

            Lester poured two glasses of wine and found a couple of cans of Coke in the fridge for the girls. “I take it you speak from personal experience, Jon? Who should I apply to for photographic evidence?”

 

            Lyle laughed. “Well, you’ve already seen the baby photos, so-“

 

            “ _Oh God your face_ ,” Juliet gasped, staring at Liz and giggling.

 

Liz hastily regained control of her face, which had twisted itself into an expression of no little horror, and stood on her dignity. “I just don’t need that mental image, okay?”

 

Lyle ruffled Liz’s hair, ignoring her yelp of displeasure and attempt to duck away from him. “Sequins or baby photos? Believe me, they were even worse than you’re thinking.”

 

Liz made a vaguely disgusted noise, handed over a plate of pork, rice and broccoli to Juliet and picked one up for herself. “Do you want dinner or not?”

 

“Yep,” Lyle said, seizing his plate. “So let’s go and eat.”

 

“I’m not sure I even want to,” Liz muttered. “I think you’ve put me off my dinner. I mean. _Yeuch_.”

 

“A herd of charging elephants couldn’t put you off your dinner.”

 

“Says the glutton who ate two full tins of fridge cake in _one day_.”

 

“So why did you make _three_ tins if you didn’t want me to eat some?”

 

“Me and Dad–“

 

“Dad and _I_ -“

 

            “I’m kind of shocked you know that rule. Or, like, care. Me and Dad finish, what, half of one in that time? I was expecting those to last the week, you greedy bastard!”

 

             Lester caught Juliet’s eye and smirked. Juliet giggled, and leaned over to kiss Liz’s cheek, effectively cutting her off mid-rant. “Shut up, let’s eat.”

 

            Liz sniffed, stuck her tongue out at Lyle and vaulted the breakfast bar before picking up her plate again and sauntering over to the table.

 

            “Liz Lester, you show-off,” Juliet accused.

 

            “Whatever.” Liz turned and grinned at her father. “Dad? You’ve gone all quiet.”

 

            “I’ve been struck dumb by Jon’s sudden understanding of grammar,” Lester drawled, and added, with a faint note of reproof, “These things don’t happen every day, you know.”

 

            The girls snickered, and Lyle grinned ruefully, sitting down and accepting his glass of wine from Lester. “I’m being persecuted.”

 

            “Bollocks,” Liz said robustly.

 

            “Elizabeth,” Lester warned.

 

            “Sorry. _Testicles_.”

 

            Lyle laughed out loud, and Juliet inhaled a mouthful of Coke and choked on it. Liz thumped her solicitously on the back and grinned at her dad, who was wearing the half-smirk that said that that had been funny once, but try it again and see what you get, sunshine. She batted her eyelashes at him.

 

            “You are incorrigible,” Lester informed her, and addressed himself to his sticky pork. “You know, this is quite passable.”

 

            “Thanks,” Liz said, and sneezed. “It’s a new recipe. Um, you know what I said earlier about minding the cinnamon? Well, _really_ mind the cinnamon, I just bit on some and that was slightly... intense.”

 

            “Bless you,” Lester said.

 

            “Are there seconds?” Lyle asked.

 

            “You read my mind,” Juliet grinned.

 

            Lester and Liz gave them identical startled looks. “What have you two been _doing_ all day?” Liz demanded, sounding vaguely scandalised. “We started eating five minutes ago!”

 

            Lester shut his eyes in despair, and Liz suddenly realised that had not been the most felicitous of questions, but Juliet didn’t notice – or at least was kind enough to pretend not to notice – and Lyle just grinned, his eyes dancing.

 

            “Two hours of ballet,” Juliet replied promptly. “And I’m not done _yet_ , just... wondering.”

 

            “Playing rugby,” Lyle answered, sounding innocent, genuine, and totally believable.

 

            Yeah, okay, _not_. Liz grinned at him, recognising a good save. “I hope you won, at least. Hollow legs, the pair of you. What _are_ we going to do with you?”

 

            “What would we do without them?” Lester asked, shaking his head and sighing. Liz thanked her lucky stars that Lyle kept his lascivious grin under control, and wondered if she’d remembered to buy more ear-plugs. There were probably spares in her bedside cabinet anyway, but it was looking like tonight might be a little... noisy.

 

            Liz caught Juliet’s eye, and smiled. Juliet smiled back, and nudged her foot gently under the table.

 

            “That’s really sweet, Dad,” Liz said, and shot a grin at him. “I think I may need to brush my teeth now.”

 

            “Yes, well,” Lester said dryly, dignified once more, “from here, it looks as if that wouldn’t go amiss.”

           


End file.
